City Of Ruin (44 page)

Ramon moved towards the relic, hands held behind his back. As soon as he was within two feet, light stuttered into being, aggregating into the glowing bars of a cage. Light continued to spit and stutter, and Ramon was totally imprisoned within it. Grinning, he made a flamboyant bow so that the light reflected off his bald head.

‘So you see,’ Bellis explained, ‘when your spider arrives, it will be catered for very well indeed.’

‘You lot really are a bunch of wise old geniuses, you realize,’ Jeryd said.

‘It takes one individual of wisdom to notice another,’ Bellis declared.

‘Nah, I’ve done nothing yet,’ Jeryd protested. ‘I won’t consider myself as having achieved a single thing until that monster is locked away.’ He waited as the cage was deactivated, the light collapsing into blackness, and there was a noticeable
absence
, some void left by the relic’s trickery, even the faint smell of burning. Jeryd was mightily impressed.

‘Let’s give it a go then,’ Bellis said, and the others set up the two devices next to each other on the rooftop. And they waited, shivering, in the cold winds.

Jeryd regarded the cityscape in anticipation, wondering how his own deepest fears would manifest after his experiences with Bellis’s orb.

*

Nanzi felt something deep within, a summoning in her very core. She shuddered, leapt up from her bed, glanced furtively around the room. The black cat peeked up in surprise from the foot of the bed.

‘Is everything all right, my love?’ Voland asked, glancing up from his book as he lay beside her.

‘I don’t feel all that well. I might make a drink and take some fresh air outside.’

‘Would you like me to get it for you?’

‘No, I’ll go.’ She pushed aside the sheets and clambered off the bed. Her spider appendages rooted out her skirt and boots, and within the minute she was heading downstairs. At the front door, she rested her hand on the frame, staring across the street, hoping to find something. The darkened buildings were defined by starlight, while a couple of tramps huddled by a small pit fire.

What was this strange sensation that had seduced her out here? It was like a thirst. All her emotions had condensed. A need for some long-lost lover. A lament for a dead friend. But this was rare – this was calling for her . . .
other
state. She felt intoxicated by her urges and, within the minute, she began to collapse inwards, then fold out again into her spider form.

With one limb she pulled the door shut, then crawled up along the surface of the wall to the roof of the abattoir. There, she could read the world in a different manner, decipher these gentle vibrations of activity. The city always appeared thronging to her in this form, but some way in the distance she could sense something so alluring, so delicious, so essential that she could not prevent herself from scuttling as quickly as she could across the deserted nightscape.

*

Jeryd watched in slack-jawed awe as hundreds of tiny spiders bled from the city’s architecture.

Out of habit he felt the need to jump on something to avoid them, but there was no way of escape up here. And this time . . . he felt no fear.

Black streams of arachnids centred on the Grey Hairs’ relic, countless trickles and trails of tiny legs and bulbous torsos. As he gazed across the nearby rooftops he could see their massed progress gliding across the slick slate-crowned buildings, and they were coming from all directions. By now Jeryd had retreated well out of the way for fear of being smothered by them, but he did not feel anything like as petrified as he used to be.

Jeryd’s nerves jittered from simply being present in this intensely surreal scene, from being surrounded by what seemed like all of the spiders in the Boreal Archipelago. Creatures that normally inhabited the dead regions of the city were gathering in one place – but he did not tremble, and felt only a fraction of that familiar tightness in his heart. All the time, though, he kept a lookout for the one monster, stealing glances between the buildings and wherever the moonlight failed to penetrate.

He untucked a blade from his boot and clutched it uncertainly; of what possible use could it be against this immense arachnid abomination? The Grey Hairs, by contrast, seemed thoroughly relaxed, as they slouched about in casual postures. Bellis turned to focus on him now and then with her hands resting on her hips. Jeryd simply nodded the answer for her unspoken question,
Are you all right?

Ramon was sitting at the edge of the roof, while Abaris seemed preoccupied with the workings of some other relic. It was as if they found themselves in crazy situations like this every day of their lives.

Bellis suddenly called out, ‘Good heavens, I think it’s coming!’

Jeryd clambered to her side, his vision following the direction she was pointing in. About forty feet away, to the east, a large shape could be seen lumbering closer, moving with a fluid gait across and down in between the architecture, now and then spitting out a slick gossamer rope of silk to aid its progress.

‘Bloody hell,’ Jeryd breathed. This was all right in theory, but now the thing was actually on its way, he had no idea how to cope with it.

‘Aye, I’ll second that,’ Abaris murmured, now beside them.

They watched it come closer, accruing in size all the time. People peering out of windows began to scream, and in the streets below others avoided its path. It almost seemed drunk, staggering in and out of vision with ragged movements. The creature was mammoth, each leg probably longer than Jeryd himself, yet it hauled its bulk onto the stone parapet of their rooftop with a series of precise clicks, as thousands of its miniature kin swarmed around and underneath.

With its myriad eyes, the monster observed the glow of the relic tentatively, but it simply could not resist its allure; a distilled, love-hate tension generated between them. It could not counter this enchantment. Very slowly, it edged closer, lowering its bulbous black head, and levering its thorax and abdomen forward. Then it stretched out its two front legs like a dog, tilting back up on the four hind ones.

There, it quivered ecstatically.

Light suddenly snapped itself free from the relic, lashing up to form a huge cage and trapped the spider within. The creature threw itself at the bars of light only to be stung savagely into retreat. It lunged repeatedly at its light-restraints, all the while emitting high-pitched screeches. Back and forth, the stinging inflicted by the bars was clearly audible, and after several attempts, the spider cowered into submission, its body rising and falling in spasms.

‘Splendid!’ Bellis declared, clapping her hands. ‘It was that simple, eh, Jeryd?’ The glow of the lure relic ceased, the torrent of smaller spiders hesitated, then began to move of their own volition, suddenly a million individuals once again. For a moment they milled about uncertainly, and it seemed an age until they had located tiny exits in the surrounding buildings.

Approaching the cage, Jeryd stood and gawked at the beast contained within. He’d expected to be far more frightened than he now felt. Was this the thing that was snatching people off the streets? What the hell kind of case was he dealing with here? He was long used to dealing with monsters of the human or rumel kind, but this . . . this was something else completely.

The three Grey Hair cultists approached from behind and studied the monstrosity alongside him. Bellis had even begun making sketches in a notebook, while the others inspected it from all angles, Abaris muttering anatomical features and cladistic theory out loud.

It seemed to possess innumerable eyes, all of them reflecting the light radiated by the cage. All staring back at him. Examining him. And whether or not this was his paranoia, he couldn’t tell, but it certainly seemed as if the giant spider knew exactly who Jeryd was.

*

Voland leapt out of bed as he heard the Phonoi make a screecownstairs.

Where was Nanzi? In a panic, and sensing something wasn’t right, he scampered around the room hurriedly dressing himself. He darted away from the bedroom, still bleary-eyed, and called out for her. There was no reply. He stumbled downstairs.

There was no sign of her throughout the entire house in fact, so he hastened even deeper through the darkness, feeling his way along the walls to the abattoir with its familiar stench of death. He was met only with silence.

‘Nanzi?!’ he shouted urgently. ‘Nanzi, are you there?’

‘She’s not here,’ one of the Phonoi replied. It quivered in and out of ghost-form, first the face of a screaming child, then an old woman, then blackness.

‘Sorry, sir,’ another chimed. ‘We know she’s out. We sense her . . .’

‘She’s right across the city.’

‘We sense she’s trapped somewhere.’

In the stillness of the room the Phonoi began to glow uniformly. They shifted through the air, as they always did, drifting about in sharp bursts only to skim away into nothing at all. He wished they would stay still so he could establish some clear answers.

‘Where is she?’ Voland pleaded.

‘Trapped is all we know,’ the Phonoi declared. ‘We simply feel it.’

‘I need to get to her,’ Voland ordered. ‘Help me, please.’

‘Anything for Doctor Voland,’ they called out soothingly. ‘Yes, anything at all.’

After a brief silence, a number of them took form and became one mass, then began to circle the room in rapid motion. They tightened their circuit around Voland, a strangling wind that settled underneath him, and around his waist. He felt a sudden lightness, and realized he was being lifted into the air then moved backward along the route he had taken to the slaughterhouse.

‘She’ll need clothes when she transforms . . .’ Voland began.

They whisked him upstairs in a flurry, let him stuff a few of her garments into a satchel, then down again. It was dizzying.

Ahead of him a door burst back, and as he flew out suddenly into the streets of the city, people pointed and stared. The Phonoi tilted him upright, like he was walking on air, and he held on to his hat as they rose higher, heading to the west, above the snow-slick rooftops of Villiren, noticing the little street fires and torches and flashes of magic, the movement of customers to and from taverns, the patrols of soldiers . . . all becoming smaller with the distance.

He flew towards his lover.

*

Jeryd turned and pointed. ‘Over there, in the distance above thooftops.’ Something was moving across the horizon, a figure with aint white glow blurring its outline. It dipped back and forth, theoved steadily. Bats scattered from the crevices along its route, making their escape in erratic paths.

‘What on earth do you suppose that is?’ Bellis asked.

‘It wears a top hat.’ Abaris was peering through a small telescope. ‘Blimey. Those are Phonoi around it, I’ll wager.’

‘Bugger, I hope not,’ Bellis whispered. ‘You sure, Abaris?’

‘Aye, for sure,’ the man replied, moving the brass tube in gentle pursuit of the moving figure. ‘Quite an intensity of them, I’d say. They’re helping him to fly.’

‘What the hell are Phonoi?’ Jeryd had moved with the Grey Hairs away from the cage, towards the edge of the rooftop, infected by Bellis’s sudden nervousness.

‘Spirit wraiths,’ Bellis explained. ‘Those blighters were once prisoners – murderers to be precise – who had their lives
quite literally
sucked out of them by means of ancient technologies. At a very creepy and unsavoury point in our history, I’d say.’

‘I’m not sure I’ve a clue what you’re on about,’ Jeryd sighed.

‘The process was intended to separate people’s minds from their bodies, but it failed to produce any real results, so at the time led to the belief that mind and body were in fact one. Instead, it was the prisoners’ . . . essence, for want of a less technical word, that was ripped from them, and distilled neatly into portable devices. That stolen essence is what comprises the Phonoi, making each of them a spirit of murder. And, pardon my language, but they’re bloody nasty to deal with close up.’

And I used to think those nights in Villjamur were full of freak shows
, Jeryd thought.
This place is twice as bad
.

‘So we shall deal with this from afar!’ Bellis immediately scurried back to her satchel, and began rummaging around inside. The figure was coming closer now, still hovering on that white wind. The Grey Hairs advised Jeryd to shuffle back towards the cage for his own safety. He was neither reluctant nor eager to do so, feeling so utterly out of place amid such weirdness. There were clearly things in this world of greater mystery than he knew how to deal with.

The old cultists took up position on the edge of the roof, each of them gripping an identical metal tube in one hand. Abaris seemed to pull a strip of material off his tube, amber dust from it caught up in the wind. They conferred. They clashed their relics like tankards in a bar. Suddenly something sparked up into the sky above, like a firework, carving the air with a scream, which faded as their missile penetrated the cloud base.

Thunder rolled in the sky, or something like it, and then came a glow that highlighted the dense layers of cumulus.

Well, I never
. . . Jeryd thought, as if he could witness any more surprises tonight.